[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[Michael Bimmler]

On 11/6/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Or maybe I'm just old fashioned in thinking that there are way to
> define success or correctness which don't consider popularity. ;)

Well...I think we all agree on the end/goal/aim "Wikipedia as accurate
/ correct / vandalism-free as possible" [choose what you like best
from these terms]. However, if I understand this discussion correctly,
it's rather about the means we use to get there. I.e., is there a way
in which we fix vandalism (or: remedy subobtimal edits[ without at the
same time driving away many new users who are potentially valuable
contributors. I'm not saying that I have the solution up my sleeve but
I guess mass-flooding new users with templates which are only barely
appropriate to their personal situation ("Your edit was reverted,
please use the sandbox for testing" triggers often something like "eh,
I didn't want to test, I wanted to improve this specific article")
can't be a very good approach either.

Michael